5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Tools for Export Sales Success

B2B Buyers Today: Well Connected, More Demanding, Better Informed

Over 500 million users—500 million prospective customers—use LinkedIn’s social network on a regular basis, many of whom are looking for products or services.

By following the steps mentioned in this article, you can turn your LinkedIn profile into an inbound sales asset that is more likely to be seen and generate inquiries, whether you utilise the network proactively or not.

We’re going to cover 5 simple steps on how you can use social selling to successfully convert prospects into customers:

Optimizing Your Profile To Get Found By Buyers
Use LinkedIn Premium to Grow your Export Revenue
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Learn More About your Buyers
Make your company page to Drive Brand Awareness
LinkedIn Ads best practices to reach more buyers

1. Optimizing Your Profile To Get Found By Buyers

When a buyer types a keyword into LinkedIn's search bar, the network's algorithm considers a number of factors to determine whether your profile should rank higher or lower than those of other professionals on the network who offer a comparable service or product.

Although Connections in Common (shared), Connections by Degree (1st Degree, then 2nd, then 3rd), and Groups in Common (shared) have the largest impact on where you appear in a search, there are other strategies to boost your ranking:

A. Repeat target keywords across your profile

The more you repeat a particular keyword, the more that the algorithm uses it as a signal that it should rank your profile over a similar profile that also ranks for that keyword.

Ideally, your target keyword (for example, "handicraft exporter") should appear at least 15-20 times across your profile. It's important that you don't do so in a spammy fashion; your profile should read well. However, there are lots of places for you to drop "handicraft exporter" in your profile to hit the minimum number: your Headline, your Summary, your Recommendations, and your Endorsements.

B. Make sure your profile is 100% profile complete

The LinkedIn algorithm rewards profiles that are completely filled out. Simply completing every section of your profile will provide you an incremental edge over anyone else in your business that offers a similar service or product and hasn't finished their profile.

2. Use LinkedIn Premium to Grow your Export Revenue

One of the ways that social media has changed buyer expectations on engagement is a distaste for cold introductions. According to LinkedIn’s research on B2B buyers, 59% would think less of you; and 53% would think less of your company if you made a cold call.

Here’s how you can leverage the added benefits of LinkedIn premium to approach buyers in the right way.

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A. Convert profile viewers into leads

Who’s Viewed Your Profile is a nice way of knowing if your outreach efforts for finding buyers are working or not. You can also reach out to people interested in you or save them as leads. Make a point to proactively share your latest designs with prospective buyers to keep them engaged until they make a purchase.

B. Use In-mail messages to build relationships with buyers

You have the ability to send a message to anyone without being connected to them. They are more effective than a cold email because it’s coming from within LinkedIn showing that you are a real person.

According to LinkedIn, in-mail messages are 2.6X more effective than normal emails. You can study the buyer’s profile and start a conversation by sending a customized catalog of products to address their needs.

A Business membership is most suitable for you if you want to connect with buyers outside of your network. You can view an unlimited number of profiles, see who's viewed your profile, get career insights, and get 15 InMail messages per month with business insights (including growth and "functional trends").

3. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to learn more about your buyers

The average B2B buyer switches jobs every 4.5 years, which makes maintaining up-todate contact information challenging. With LinkedIn’s Sales navigator :

You can track your buyer’s growth (increase in headcount can be an indicator)
Filter your target audience in a more specific way.
Recommend sales leads, track updates, and connect with specific people.
Use advanced filtering not available anywhere else on the platform.

Sales Navigator membership is most suitable for you if you’re looking for sales-specific insights, lead recommendations (including the option to save leads), and advanced searches with a lead-builder. You also get 20 InMail messages per month, as well as the usual "see who viewed your profile" with unlimited profile browsing features.

Also here’s a quick growth-hack you can incorporate into your Sales Navigator lead generation tactics.

Scraping groups

Once you find your ideal group where your target market hangs out, you can scrape its members and automate your outreach!

Find a LinkedIn group where your audience is (find a list of Export-Import LinkedIn groups below)
Use Phantombuster to scrape its list of members.
Use Expandi to connect with them.
Set up your connection message templates and automated follow-ups.

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4. Make Your Company Page to Drive Brand Awareness

Having a LinkedIn company page gives your export business a home base and allows buyers to discover and connect with you. They can learn more about your brand and the products that you offer.

You can post behind-the-scenes information, share your designs to engage and foster a sense of community with your buyers.
Understand your buyer’s thought process by always sharing a catalogue with an engaged buyer and track which products they look at the most. Click here to learn more about how you can do that.

LinkedIn company pages are also a great way to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), it gives your company another opportunity to be discovered by those searching online for your products.

‍5. LinkedIn Ads best practices to reach more buyers

A. Define your target audience

You can refine your target audience by location, company details (e.g. industry or company size), demographics, education, job experience and interests.

One word of caution: LinkedIn advises against getting over-specific with ad targeting.

B. Craft your ad copy with a clear call to action

LinkedIn ads should typically end with a clear CTA, often in the form of a text button. Your buyers are busy so tell them exactly what to do next.

C. Choose the right content & experiment with ad styles

You can promote organic posts as sponsored content, try Dynamic Ads, Carousel Ads, Video Ads, and Text Ads.

D. Measuring ROI for LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads average CPC is around 6€, and for Facebook and Google Ads is between 1€ to 2€. However, you should not take the CPC as a basis to compare platform costs. The goal being generating leads, to compare platform costs, you should take the CPL (Cost per Lead) as a basis.

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Today’s buyers are coming to the sales conversation with a wealth of knowledge gained through social media, content and other research before they interact with a sales professional. Social selling is no longer an option; it is a requirement. So, make sure each interaction with the buyer creates an impact. Understand the buyer’s needs and proactively respond to them by sending a customized product catalogue.

List of LinkedIn Export Groups to Join Today:
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International Export Import - Join Now

International Trade 2.0 - Import & Export - Join Now

Export and Import - Join Now

ASIA - Import, Export, Trading - Join Now

EUROPE - Import, Export, Trading - Join Now

China Import & Export | 中国进出 - Join Now

Export Import Business Group - Join Now

IMPORT & EXPORT - RUSSIA - Join Now

Import Export China/India/Africa/South America/Middle East/Australia Business - Join Now